This 10-day intensive training course provides participants with a comprehensive understanding of GIS for Public Health in Humanitarian Crises, specifically leveraging the power of QGIS and Epi Info. Designed for public health professionals, epidemiologists, humanitarian aid workers, and anyone involved in emergency response, this course equips attendees with the essential theoretical knowledge and advanced practical skills to rapidly collect, manage, analyze, and visualize public health data in geographically explicit ways during crisis situations. Through a blend of lectures, extensive hands-on software exercises, and real-world case studies, participants will learn to confidently apply geospatial tools to support disease surveillance, outbreak response, resource allocation, and vulnerability assessment in challenging and dynamic environments.
The curriculum begins with an introduction to GIS and public health in humanitarian contexts and then focuses on geospatial data collection and management for health emergencies. It delves into core QGIS functionalities for public health analysis and advanced applications in spatial epidemiology and disease mapping. Further modules cover environmental health risk assessment and mapping, healthcare access, resource allocation, and service delivery optimization, and population mapping, vulnerability, and displacement analysis. The course extensively covers Epi Info for epidemiological data management, including advanced Epi Info data analysis and survey design, and integrating Epi Info and other health data with QGIS. More advanced topics include geocoding and address matching, network analysis for health logistics, time series and spatio-temporal analysis for outbreaks, and automated mapping and reporting with QGIS. It also introduces remote sensing for public health, addresses data quality, ethics, and privacy, and explores web-based GIS for information sharing, culminating in an applied end-to-end project.
Who Should Attend the Training
- Public health officers and practitioners
- Field epidemiologists and disease surveillance staff
- Humanitarian aid workers and program managers
- Emergency response and disaster management personnel
- NGO staff involved in health or nutrition programs
- Researchers in public health and international development
- Data managers and information management officers
- Anyone involved in health data analysis and decision-making in crisis settings
Objectives of the Training
Upon completion of this training, participants will be able to:
- Understand the critical role and strategic importance of GIS in all phases of humanitarian public health response.
- Design and implement robust geospatial data collection strategies for health emergencies, including mobile data collection.
- Master essential and advanced geospatial data management, manipulation, and analysis techniques using QGIS.
- Apply advanced spatial epidemiology methods for sophisticated disease mapping, outbreak detection, cluster analysis, and trend forecasting.
- Conduct comprehensive environmental health risk assessments and generate detailed risk maps.
- Analyze geographical access to healthcare facilities, identify service gaps, and optimize the allocation of health resources and services.
- Create high-resolution population distribution maps and conduct in-depth vulnerability and displacement analysis.
- Utilize Epi Info proficiently for designing complex public health questionnaires, managing survey data, and performing advanced statistical analysis.
- Seamlessly integrate diverse public health datasets from Epi Info, spreadsheets, and other sources with QGIS for comprehensive spatial analysis.
- Perform geocoding and address matching on public health records for precise spatial referencing.
- Apply network analysis techniques to optimize health logistics, supply chain management, and emergency response routes.
- Conduct time series and spatio-temporal analysis to monitor outbreak dynamics and predict future trends.
- Automate routine mapping and reporting tasks within QGIS for efficient information dissemination.
- Understand the basic principles and applications of remote sensing for public health in crisis contexts.
- Navigate critical considerations of data quality, ethics, privacy, and security in humanitarian GIS.
- Explore options for sharing public health information effectively through web-based GIS applications.
- Design and execute an end-to-end GIS for public health project, from data conceptualization to final product delivery.
Personal Benefits
- Acquire highly specialized expertise: Become proficient in a critical, high-demand field combining public health, GIS, and humanitarian action.
- Enhanced operational effectiveness: Drastically improve your ability to analyze health data and contribute to timely, evidence-based interventions during crises.
- Advanced analytical toolkit: Gain mastery over open-source GIS and epidemiological software, expanding your analytical capabilities significantly.
- Problem-solving leadership: Develop the skills to lead and implement GIS components within complex humanitarian health programs.
- Career acceleration: Position yourself as an invaluable asset in global health, emergency response, and international development organizations.
Organizational Benefits
- Strengthened crisis response capacity: Enable faster, more targeted, and more effective public health interventions during emergencies.
- Optimized resource deployment: Improve the strategic allocation of limited health resources, personnel, and supplies.
- Enhanced disease surveillance: Establish robust systems for real-time monitoring, early warning, and rapid response to disease outbreaks.
- Evidence-driven programming: Foster data-driven decision-making, leading to more impactful and accountable health programs.
- Increased operational efficiency: Automate routine mapping and reporting, reducing manual effort and improving data dissemination.
- Cost-effective solutions: Leverage powerful open-source tools, minimizing software licensing costs.
Training Methodology
- Interactive lectures and conceptual discussions grounded in real-world public health and humanitarian challenges.
- Extensive hands-on practical exercises and guided labs using QGIS and Epi Info software, as well as relevant external tools.
- Live demonstrations and step-by-step workflows for complex data handling, analysis, and visualization tasks.
- Application of diverse real-world public health datasets and simulated humanitarian crisis scenarios.
- Group exercises and collaborative problem-solving sessions, including simulated outbreak investigations.
- Q&A sessions with expert trainers, fostering a dynamic learning environment.
- Individual assignments and a culminating comprehensive applied project for practical skill application and portfolio development.
Trainer Experience
Our trainers are highly experienced public health specialists, epidemiologists, and senior GIS professionals with extensive, demonstrable backgrounds in applying geospatial technologies in a range of humanitarian and emergency contexts globally. They possess advanced degrees in public health, epidemiology, geographic information science, or related fields, and have a proven track record of working with leading international organizations, United Nations agencies, NGOs, and national health ministries in diverse crisis zones. Their deep practical insights, derived from direct field experience in emergency response, ensure that participants receive instruction that is not only theoretically robust but also rich with actionable strategies, operational best practices, and innovative solutions for leveraging GIS effectively in rapid-response public health environments. They are adept at guiding participants through complex scenarios and fostering a strong understanding of both the technical and contextual challenges.
Quality Statement
We are committed to delivering high-quality training programs that are both comprehensive and practical. Our courses are meticulously designed, continually updated to reflect the latest advancements in public health methodologies, geospatial technologies, and humanitarian best practices, and delivered by expert instructors. We strive to empower participants with the knowledge and skills necessary to excel in their respective fields, ensuring a valuable and impactful learning experience that directly translates to real-world application.
Tailor-made Courses
We understand that every organization has unique training needs. We offer customized GIS for Public Health in Humanitarian Crises courses designed to address your specific health priorities (e.g., nutrition, WASH, disease-specific focus), geographic context, existing data infrastructure, and operational requirements. Whether you need to focus on a particular disease outbreak, specific data collection tools (e.g., KoboToolbox integration), advanced statistical modeling techniques, or integration with your organizational reporting systems, we can develop a bespoke training solution to meet your precise requirements. Please contact us to discuss how we can tailor a program for your team.
Course Duration: 10 days
Training fee: USD 2500
Module 1: Introduction to GIS and Public Health in Humanitarian Contexts
- Overview of humanitarian crises: Types, phases, and health impacts.
- The critical role of GIS in the humanitarian program cycle (preparedness, response, recovery, mitigation).
- Key public health concepts for spatial analysis: Disease surveillance, determinants of health, access to services.
- Introduction to the open-source GIS ecosystem for humanitarian action (QGIS, Epi Info, ODK/KoboToolbox).
- Ethical considerations, data privacy, confidentiality, and data sharing protocols in humanitarian GIS.
- Practical session: Analyzing real-world case studies of GIS applications in humanitarian health emergencies and discussing ethical dilemmas.
Module 2: Geospatial Data Collection and Management for Health Emergencies
- Types of public health data in emergencies: Case data, facility data, population data, infrastructure data.
- Geospatial data collection methods: GPS devices, mobile data collection (KoboToolbox, ODK, Survey123).
- Designing effective digital spatial data collection forms and surveys.
- Data quality control and validation strategies for field-collected public health data.
- Best practices for data management: Organization, cleaning, transformation, and preparation for GIS.
- Practical session: Designing and deploying a mobile health survey form for data collection, then importing simulated data into QGIS.
Module 3: Core QGIS Functionalities for Public Health Analysis
- Mastering the QGIS interface and essential tools for spatial analysis.
- Loading, symbolizing, and styling vector data (points, lines, polygons) for health mapping.
- Working with raster data: Satellite imagery, population grids, elevation models.
- Understanding and managing projections, coordinate reference systems, and reprojection.
- Fundamental geoprocessing tools: Clip, dissolve, merge, buffer, intersect.
- Practical session: Importing diverse public health spatial datasets into QGIS, applying advanced symbology, and performing basic geoprocessing operations.
Module 4: Spatial Epidemiology and Advanced Disease Mapping
- Principles of spatial epidemiology: Understanding disease distribution, determinants, and diffusion.
- Advanced thematic mapping of disease incidence, prevalence, and mortality rates (e.g., standardized rates).
- Mapping and analyzing disease outbreaks, clusters, and spread dynamics.
- Identifying statistically significant disease clusters using tools like Hot Spot Analysis (Getis-Ord Gi*) and Cluster and Outlier Analysis (Anselin Local Moran's I).
- Risk stratification and vulnerability mapping for specific diseases.
- Practical session: Performing advanced disease mapping, calculating incidence rates, and identifying statistically significant disease clusters in a simulated outbreak scenario.
Module 5: Environmental Health Risk Assessment and Mapping
- Mapping environmental determinants of health: Water sources, sanitation facilities, waste sites, air quality data.
- Assessing exposure pathways to environmental hazards: Flood zones, pollution sources, industrial areas.
- Creating comprehensive environmental health risk maps by combining multiple layers.
- Analyzing proximity to hazardous sites and vulnerable populations.
- Using remote sensing derivatives for environmental health monitoring (e.g., land cover, temperature).
- Practical session: Creating multi-criteria environmental health risk maps by combining and weighting different spatial layers related to hazards and exposure.
Module 6: Healthcare Access, Resource Allocation, and Service Delivery Optimization
- Mapping existing healthcare facilities: Hospitals, clinics, mobile health units.
- Advanced analysis of spatial accessibility to health services (e.g., travel time analysis using network datasets, service areas).
- Identifying critical gaps in health service provision and underserved populations.
- Optimizing facility placement, mobile clinic routes, and resource distribution using spatial analysis.
- Mapping human resources for health and their geographical distribution.
- Practical session: Performing network analysis to calculate travel times to health facilities and identify areas with poor access, then proposing optimal locations for new clinics.
Module 7: Population Mapping, Vulnerability, and Displacement Analysis
- Methods for population estimation in crisis contexts: Census data, population grids (e.g., WorldPop, HRSL), satellite imagery.
- Creating high-resolution population distribution maps and demographic profiles.
- Identifying and mapping vulnerable populations: Displaced persons, refugees, elderly, children, disabled.
- Overlaying socio-economic indicators to create composite vulnerability indices.
- Using GIS for camp management, settlement planning, and tracking population movements.
- Practical session: Using population raster data and socio-economic indicators to create a multi-layer vulnerability map for a simulated displacement scenario.
Module 8: Introduction to Epi Info for Epidemiological Data Management
- Overview of Epi Info software: Form design, data entry, basic analysis.
- Designing robust public health questionnaires and survey forms in Epi Info's Form Designer.
- Setting up validation rules and skip patterns for enhanced data quality.
- Basic data entry, management, cleaning, and filtering workflows in Epi Info.
- Exporting Epi Info data in various formats suitable for GIS integration.
- Practical session: Designing a complex epidemiological survey form in Epi Info with skip patterns and validation, and practicing efficient data entry.
Module 9: Advanced Epi Info Data Analysis and Survey Design
- Performing advanced statistical analysis in Epi Info: Frequencies, cross-tabs, chi-square, t-tests, regression.
- Generating epidemiological tables and charts (e.g., epidemic curves).
- Working with multiple forms and relational databases within Epi Info.
- Conducting outbreak investigation analysis using Epi Info.
- Best practices for survey design and data collection in emergency settings.
- Practical session: Analyzing a simulated outbreak dataset within Epi Info, generating an epidemic curve, and identifying key demographic risk factors.
Module 10: Integrating Epi Info and Other Health Data with QGIS
- Importing various tabular health datasets (CSV, Excel) into QGIS.
- Geocoding public health records: Address matching, coordinate conversion, manual geocoding.
- Performing attribute joins and spatial joins between tabular health data and spatial layers in QGIS.
- Creating dynamic thematic maps and charts from joined attributes for health indicators.
- Handling messy or incomplete geospatial health data.
- Practical session: Importing a multi-source health dataset (including Epi Info export) into QGIS, geocoding it, and performing complex joins to create integrated health maps.
Module 11: Geocoding and Address Matching for Public Health Data
- Principles of geocoding: Converting addresses or place names to geographic coordinates.
- Geocoding methods: Online services, local geocoders, manual geocoding.
- Strategies for improving geocoding accuracy in challenging environments.
- Best practices for preparing address data for geocoding.
- Handling non-standard addresses and place names in humanitarian contexts.
- Practical session: Geocoding a list of health facility addresses or disease case locations using various methods in QGIS and assessing accuracy.
Module 12: Network Analysis for Health Logistics and Access
- Building network datasets from road and pathway layers in QGIS.
- Performing shortest path analysis for emergency vehicle routing.
- Calculating service areas for health facilities based on travel time/distance.
- Optimizing health commodity distribution routes.
- Locating the closest facility for a given patient or incident.
- Practical session: Creating a network dataset and performing emergency response routing and service area analysis for a simulated scenario.
Module 13: Time Series and Spatio-Temporal Analysis for Outbreaks
- Understanding spatio-temporal data for disease surveillance.
- Visualizing disease trends over space and time (e.g., animated maps).
- Analyzing spatio-temporal clusters of disease.
- Introduction to predicting future outbreak patterns using historical data.
- Methods for integrating time-stamped health data with spatial information.
- Practical session: Creating an animated time-series map of a simulated disease outbreak to visualize its spread and evolution over time.
Module 14: Automated Mapping and Reporting with QGIS
- Principles of efficient map production for humanitarian reporting.
- Using QGIS Print Layouts for professional map design.
- Creating map series and atlases for rapid reporting across multiple areas.
- Automating map exports and report generation using QGIS functions or simple Python scripting.
- Designing dashboards and infographics incorporating maps for decision-makers.
- Practical session: Designing a multi-page atlas for a public health report, showcasing different health indicators across various administrative units.
Module 15: Introduction to Remote Sensing for Public Health
- Overview of satellite imagery and its applications in public health.
- Using satellite data for population estimation and mapping informal settlements.
- Identifying environmental factors influencing health (e.g., water bodies, vegetation health, urban heat islands).
- Rapid damage assessment and infrastructure mapping using pre- and post-crisis imagery.
- Accessing and utilizing open-source satellite data platforms.
- Practical session: Loading and interpreting satellite imagery in QGIS to identify features relevant to public health (e.g., water sources, informal settlements).
Module 16: Data Quality, Ethics, and Privacy in Humanitarian GIS
- Importance of data quality: Accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness.
- Strategies for data validation and error detection in geospatial health data.
- Navigating ethical considerations in mapping sensitive public health data.
- Protecting privacy and confidentiality of individuals in spatial datasets.
- Data sharing protocols and considerations for humanitarian operations.
- Practical session: Conducting a data quality audit on a simulated public health dataset and discussing strategies for de-identification and secure data sharing.
Module 17: Web-Based GIS for Public Health Information Sharing
- Overview of web mapping concepts for public health communication.
- Introduction to open-source web mapping libraries (e.g., Leaflet.js, OpenLayers) for displaying health data.
- Using online platforms for sharing interactive public health maps (e.g., QGIS Cloud, ArcGIS Online public maps).
- Designing dashboards for real-time public health monitoring.
- Principles of effective visualization for public health audiences.
- Practical session: Creating a simple interactive web map of public health data using a free online platform or a basic HTML/JavaScript setup.
Module 18: Applied Project: End-to-End GIS for Public Health in Crisis
- Comprehensive review of all learned concepts and techniques.
- Participants work individually or in groups on a realistic simulated public health humanitarian crisis scenario.
- Project stages: Data acquisition, cleaning, integration, spatial analysis, visualization, and reporting.
- Development of a final map product or spatial analysis report.
- Presentation of project findings and discussion of practical challenges and solutions.
- Practical session: Participants execute a full-cycle GIS project for a simulated public health crisis, culminating in a detailed analysis and presentation of their findings.
Requirements:
· Participants should be reasonably proficient in English.
· Applicants must live up to Armstrong Global Institute admission criteria.
Terms and Conditions
1. Discounts: Organizations sponsoring Four Participants will have the 5th attend Free
2. What is catered for by the Course Fees: Fees cater for all requirements for the training – Learning materials, Lunches, Teas, Snacks and Certification. All participants will additionally cater for their travel and accommodation expenses, visa application, insurance, and other personal expenses.
3. Certificate Awarded: Participants are awarded Certificates of Participation at the end of the training.
4. The program content shown here is for guidance purposes only. Our continuous course improvement process may lead to changes in topics and course structure.
5. Approval of Course: Our Programs are NITA Approved. Participating organizations can therefore claim reimbursement on fees paid in accordance with NITA Rules.
Booking for Training
Simply send an email to the Training Officer on training@armstrongglobalinstitute.com and we will send you a registration form. We advise you to book early to avoid missing a seat to this training.
Or call us on +254720272325 / +254725012095 / +254724452588
Payment Options
We provide 3 payment options, choose one for your convenience, and kindly make payments at least 5 days before the Training start date to reserve your seat:
1. Groups of 5 People and Above – Cheque Payments to: Armstrong Global Training & Development Center Limited should be paid in advance, 5 days to the training.
2. Invoice: We can send a bill directly to you or your company.
3. Deposit directly into Bank Account (Account details provided upon request)
Cancellation Policy
1. Payment for all courses includes a registration fee, which is non-refundable, and equals 15% of the total sum of the course fee.
2. Participants may cancel attendance 14 days or more prior to the training commencement date.
3. No refunds will be made 14 days or less before the training commencement date. However, participants who are unable to attend may opt to attend a similar training course at a later date or send a substitute participant provided the participation criteria have been met.
Tailor Made Courses
This training course can also be customized for your institution upon request for a minimum of 5 participants. You can have it conducted at our Training Centre or at a convenient location. For further inquiries, please contact us on Tel: +254720272325 / +254725012095 / +254724452588 or Email training@armstrongglobalinstitute.com
Accommodation and Airport Transfer
Accommodation and Airport Transfer is arranged upon request and at extra cost. For reservations contact the Training Officer on Email: training@armstrongglobalinstitute.com or on Tel: +254720272325 / +254725012095 / +254724452588
